1. What is the aim of your study? What are the objectives for your study?
Aim
The aim of the research is to critically assess the perception of soundscape in an open plan office and how they impact on employees’ performance, health and wellbeing.
Objective
To review the concepts and properties of soundscapes within an indoor setting
To review the perception of the soundscape to identify positive and negative sounds.
To evaluate the relationship between the acoustic/auditory environment and the responses and behavioural characteristics of people living within it.
To determine the impact of adding different soundscape to allow for diverse functional spaces within the offices i.e. addition of quiet rooms on employees’ satisfaction and stress levels.
To compare employees’ perception of adding positive sounds to the existing offices i.e. masking (white/pink noise & music) and distracting sounds (natural sounds eg. water).
Evaluating possible improvements to the soundscape to enhance comfort conditions and satisfaction in the tested environments.
2. Explain the rationale for this study (refer to relevant research literature in your response).
Open plan offices are becoming more popular due to various reasons including their useable area and enhanced communication between employees. However, adapting open plan offices creates several issues that might surpasses positive ones. Some of the main concerns of having open plan offices are noise and privacy issues which impact employees’ performance, health and satisfaction with their environment (Acun and Yilmazer, 2018; Jungsoo et al., 2013; Jahncke et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2012; Kaarlela-Tuomaala et al., 2009).
There have been numerous studies to define the objective measures and design characteristics of open plan offices in order to increase work satisfaction and provide suitable environment for employees. Some of the key findings of previous studies are listed below:
– People generated noise within the building and external noise from outdoors are considered annoying (Pierrette et al., 2014).
– The main elements defined to enhance office environment satisfaction are appropriate lighting and ease of communication (M et al., 2011).
– Open plan offices forces employees to define their own copying approach with existing soundscape such as wearing headphones to isolate themselves which in turns opposes the concept of having open plan offices (Seddigh et al., 2015).
– Silent offices can be as distractive and unconfutable as noisy offices (Seddigh et al., 2015).
Based on the above, objective measures alone are not enough to define office acoustics and soundscape studies to evaluate employees’ perception are as important due to the impact of soundscape on employees’ performance, health, and overall satisfaction with the workplace.
The need for soundscape perception is becoming more important and has been acknowledged and included in ISO 12913-1 2014 publication (ISO 12913-1, 2014). Recently there are many studies on evaluating urban and external soundscapes but very few studies to explore soundscape perception and possible improvements in open plan offices and indoor spaces.
One of the studies on open plan offices in china determined the relationship between loud noise and depression or being tired at work; however, the solutions provided are not very efficient as they go against the core concepts of open plan offices for example the implementation of raised panels between desks or private office to isolate employee (Zhang, Kang and Jiao, 2012).
Other studies focused on introducing positive sound such as masking noise such as using different water sounds to enhance indoor soundscapes. These studies varied in their outcome and employees’ perception from improved satisfaction to no difference or annoyance level based on the different sounds used (Young Joen et al., 2018, 2013; Galburn and T.Ali, 2013). Rådstern-Ekman et al. (2013) study included sea, stream, waterfall sounds, and in later studies fountain sounds to conclude that pleasant water sounds can enhance satisfaction even when they are below background noise and therefore considered as distractive sounds (Radsten Ekman et al., 2015, 2013). This is also proved through Jeon et al. (2010) as he stated that water sounds are more effective when they are 3 dB or equal to background noise (Young Jeon, et al.,2010). These studies were mainly focused on masking outdoor noise and further investigation is required to validate their performance in masking indoor noise.
3. Provide an outline of your study design and methods.
The study will include two open plan offices at the same Organisation, and will therefore, have similar work tasks. One space is very quiet (this consist of one floor) and the other is fairly lively/ noisy (this consists of two floors), there will be 5 different stages to the study, these stages are described below:
1. Define physical features and objective acoustics parameters of the offices (RT, STI, LAeq, shape, size, etc.).
Both offices have structured desks layout (grid system) with very little variation in desks distribution. Therefore, there will be 3-6 measurement locations across the offices based on the office size and number of floors. These measurements are used as a reference to the existing acoustic characteristics of the space.
2. Identify existing soundscape of the two offices:
Carry out a survey to assess employees’ perception of existing soundscape.
i. This can be achieved through soundwalks and surveys. Considering both offices follow hot desking approach and have structured desks layout, soundwalks wouldn’t have added much to the perception due to the lack of variation in the soundscape and the fact that employees are already experiencing different locations within the office due to the hot desking approach. Consequently, surveys were considered more appropriate for the study.
ii. The survey involves giving participants questionnaire at the start of the working day and ask them to fill it by the end of the day; to have an idea of what are they expected to observe throughout the day.
iii. Sound meters are kept close to the locations of participants to carry out objective/subjective measurements simultaneously.
3. Convert one of the meeting rooms in the noisy office to quiet room in order to give the employees the option to change their soundscape, especially when doing concentration demanding tasks.
i. Survey to check employees feedback on the overall satisfaction with the office soundscape after having the quiet room and the impact on their performance levels.
4. Analyse the impact of various background sounds (including natural sounds like water, music, pink/white) on employees’ performance and satisfaction with the soundscape
i. This is more feasible to implement in the quiet smaller office.
ii. Implement sound masking without advanced notice to the employees and then carry out a survey to check employees’ perception of the masking/distracting sounds.
5. Once the above surveys are completed, check the possibility to perform the same in the international offices (could be 3-5). Doing this will increase the study sample and cover a wider selection with various cultural backgrounds. Additionally, will involve wider range of office designs and objective sound characteristics.
4. Please provide a detailed description of the study sample, covering selection, sample profile,
recruitment and if appropriate, inclusion and exclusion criteria.
The sample for each survey will random sampling of 20 people minimum, including both males and females working in the offices.
Employees will be of different age group and backgrounds, mostly ranging between 24 years – 60 years.
Approximately all employees will be working 9.5 h/day
Around 25% of employees will have background in acoustics (i.e. acoustic consultants, AV consultants, etc.)
Ideally the same sample should be used throughout the stages but it may not be possible due to employees’ availability.
The main limitations of the sampling group are the following:
i. The main limitations are sampling number as the number is restricted to smaller sample trying to get most participants to give their input on both offices which could be harder with larger group
ii. Sampling group varies largely in age which can influence their experience, health, and moods.
iii. Sampling group varies largely in their background in both offices which can include factors influencing participants subjective view of the soundscape that are not considered in this study, including but not limited to their home soundscape and what they are expecting from their work soundscape.
9. What resources will you require? (e.g. psychometric scales, IT equipment, specialised software, access to specialist facilities, such as microbiological containment laboratories).
1. Hardware:
• Available Test room/Quiet Room with Desks + Screens
• Sound Meter
• Audio Recorder
• Might need speakers for sound masking if not available in the office
2. Software
• Audacity (Digital Audio Editor)
• SPSS/Excel
10. What study materials will you use? (Please give full details here of validated scales, bespoke questionnaires, interview schedules, focus group schedules etc and attach all materials to the
application)
The surveys will be carried out using information sheet and questionnaires, both are still under design but will be reviewed by the supervising professor before starting the survey. They include but not limited to the following elements:
1. Information sheet:
• Brief about project details and the role of participants in the survey.
• Addressing data protection and anonymity of participants’ feedback and filled questionnaire.
• Requesting participants to sign consent for participation in the survey and indicating freedom of withdrawing from the survey at anytime
2. Questionnaires
• Personal details – Gender, Age group, Background.
• Office satisfaction: different factors impacting satisfaction and their importance. How important acoustic is compared to other factors like lighting, temperature, design, etc. can be evaluated through 5-point scale e.g. not important at all, not important, neutral, important, and very important.
• Acoustics Factors- (scaled questions mostly using 5-point scale eg. (very quiet, quiet, acceptable, noisy, very noisy):
Sound Level: 5 point-scale
Acoustic sources and perception: dominance and quality description; positive, negative, pleasant, annoying. Conversations, ring tones, HVAC, external noise, office equipment, etc.
Health symptoms in relation to office soundscape: sound sensitivity, tiredness, depression, stress, distraction, impact on performance.
Suggested improvements
Comparison of the above mentioned factors for different improvement solutions: the impact of the improvement option on the different elements using different scales.
Coping methods: example frequent use of headphone music to mask the noise, etc.